Page 1 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby
1
ELISA
The clock over Trauma Two reads 1:45 a.m. My feet insist midnight was last week.
St. Adrian’s never sleeps, it just changes tempo.
On the hour, the vending machine coughs up another bag of pretzels.
On the half hour, the drunk tank sings.
Somewhere between the two, the ambulance bay door wheezes open and a gurney barrels in with the kind of urgency that makes every nurse glance up at once.
“GSW. Male. Mid-thirties. Field dressing looks like it was done with a prayer and a bread knife,” the paramedic calls as we swing the doors wide.
I'm already moving.
Gloves on, mask up, cart angled with a practiced hip.
The man on the gurney is pale beneath dried sweat, jaw set like he is holding something back on purpose.
His T-shirt is stuck to his side with blood and somebody’s idea of stitches, a crooked railroad track tugged tight with fishing line.
His eyes flicker under heavy lids.
They are dark, focused, and not as fogged as his vitals suggest they should be.
“On three,” I say, and we roll him to our bed.
The mattress sighs. The overheads blaze. The room tightens around the rhythm we know.
“Two units typed and cross-matched,” I tell Rizzo, who is already hanging the first bag.
She nods without looking at me, curls frizzing out from under her cap like she fought a static monster and lost.
“BP eighty over fifty. Heart rate one-ten,” murmurs the tech at the monitor.
“Sir, can you hear me?” I lean into his line of sight, clean voice, steady tone. “You are in the ER at St. Adrian’s. I’m Elisa. We are going to take care of you. What is your name?”
His mouth tics.
For a second, I think he will say it.
Then he swallows something I can't see.
The move is small but practiced.
“Alright,” I say, because we can do this the hard way too. “Let’s make sure you keep what blood you have left.”
I cut the shirt from hem to collar, scissors working quickly. Cloth falls away in damp curls.
The smell of iron and antiseptic pushes up.
Beneath the mess, the wound is high on the left side, tucked under his ribs.
Whoever tried to close it did not disinfect properly.
The edges are angry. There is still a slow ooze in the middle where the skin has gapped. It needs to be flushed, debrided, and reclosed.
